Write or Die: Coffee at Night

i am not a prairie chick. but here i was out in the middle of the goddamned badlands trying to get over a breakup which is just stupid. stupid. and there was a coffee pot engulfed in flames on the first night. i was thinking it would be hard to sleep. i imagined a coyote eating me alive. and i thought that would be preferable to the way i felt every day. i imagined myself becoming a wolf, maybe. but then i thought it would only be worth it if i was going to be an alpha mate. buck had been a beta male for sure. and i was an alpha girl. therein lay much of our trouble. shit. so, i was on this prairie missing my ipod and other affectations. i missed the starbucks cup that i would have been gently cradling in my hand if were home--fingering the edge of the cup guard, ruining its integrity. we weren't allowed to bring electronic devices on this outward bound for the lovelorn. what was i doing here? trying to remember or trying to forget? my lifecoach advised me against thinking through things too much with a specfiic outcome in mind. she said buck was buck and he was in my skin and my hair and my lungs and leftover like forensic evidence at a crime scene. he's just a goddamned fact of my life. take the good take the bad. whatever happened to that show? what was its narrative arc? how did it end? did tootie ever lose her virginity? there was some episode where it was implied, but then her jock boyfriend couldn't do it. were they trying to say he was gay? or was it some other secret? the 80s. situationally comic television scenarios were king. buck did not grow up watching television. it was another issue of ours. another one in a legion of thready, sticky problems. that all equaled i was still not going to be anyone's. i've always known that i'm not really suitable for anyone's long haul. he would probably couple up with that girl from his job. eventually. buck has this weird preoccupation with the appearance of propriety. he would wait the ceremonial month to six weeks before he even asked her for coffee. but i always felt her there like a smoky, disparate thought at the edge of who we were. he was too quick to leave her out of anecdotes and other places in his constructed narratives where she was relevant. negative space was the suggestion of her. karen. the coffee pot is in flames. i imagine it will taste like tar going down. my manuscript is stained at home on my desk. stained from the last venti americano i set down on it. the day before buck called and apologized for what he could not say. i had no reason to do anything except head out here to flatness, to a lack of man-made light. i am terribly afraid for myself. not of wolves or coyotes or even the big, big sky. i'm just going to fade right off the tip of his understanding. i'm going to be that unremarkable person he marked time with before karen agreed to have coffee with him.